About Gordon

Living alone on a reporter's salary meant Gordon Dritschilo had to learn how to cook, which he threw himself into with a geekish passion. In the process, went from the sort of person who orders a cheeseburger at a fancy restaurant to having a reputation as the guy who will eat anything.

Pork

02/27/2013

Apples and pork is a more classic combination, but I had all these dried apricots to use up. Apricots go so much better with lamb, but it’s been one of those months and pork is just so much cheaper.

So, this dish was a marriage not of love, but of necessity. Still, it turned out to be a happy one. I had planned to include ginger in the filling, but forgot amidst the usual kitchen bustle. It was still good.

This can be done on a much smaller scale with pork tenderloin, though you’ll want to mince up the apricots somewhat smaller than you need to for a hunk of regular loin.

When roasting and then eating pork, don’t be afraid of a little pink. Overcooking pork was a sad necessity once, but trichinosis isn’t nearly the issue it used to be. Pork is not, in fact, the other white meat.

Apricot-stuffed Roast Pork Loin

1 two-pound pork loin roast

2 medium onions, diced small, plus two more, sliced thick.

1 handful of dried apricots, roughly chopped

1 large dash of cumin

Dry vermouth

Salt and pepper

Butter

Preheat the oven to 475.

Sweat the diced onions in some butter, seasoning with salt and pepper, then add the apricots and cumin.

(This is where I would have grated in the ginger, if I hadn’t spaced it)

Cook, stirring, until the onions begin to color. Then splash with the vermouth and cook until the liquid is almost entirely gone. Remove from heat and set aside.

Now we’re at the hard part. Place the roast on a cutting board, fattier side down. Make a lengthwise cut down the center of the roast, going about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through, but not all the way.

Open the roast like a book and then make similar lengthwise cuts on the sides, so that there would be a cross running through the center of the roast if you folded it back up again. Open the halves up the way you did the center, and spread the apricot-onion filling around the inside of the roast.

Now, fold the roast back up and tie it closed. If you can’t get your hands on proper kitchen twine, unwaxed dental floss will work.

Take a small roasting pan or skillet and scatter the thickly sliced onions across the bottom. Pat the roast dry, season it liberally with salt and pepper and place it atop the onion slices. Slide the whole thing in the oven.

After 10 to 15 minutes, the roast should be sufficiently brown. Drop the heat to 350 and cook for another half-hour. The internal temperature was headed toward 150 when I took mine out.

Remove from oven when done, set aside and cover with foil. Let the roast sit 10 to 15 minutes before carving. Slice tableside and serve. The onions from the bottom of the pan can serve as a condiment, if needs be.

02/13/2013

You’ve heard of chicken-fried steak? Well, this is Buffalo chicken-fried steak, only made with pork.

I’d been knocking around the concept of Buffalo chicken-fried steak for some time. When I found myself standing between packages of some really thin pork chops and a rack of marked-down bottles of Frank’s Red Hot wing sauce (presumably Superbowl leftovers), I decided the time had come.

Unsure how hot it would come out, I made a blue cheese sauce to go with it. It turned out not strictly necessary – the marinade gave the pork some zing, but it was a far cry from dangerous.

If you can’t get those really thin pork chops, regular-sized ones pounded flat will do the job.

If you like the steak idea better, some top blade steaks (butterflied to remove the line of gristle and then pounded flat) will fit the bill.

This recipe is calibrated to serve three with appropriate side dishes, I opted for baked potatoes and snow peas. The excess sauce was fantastic on the potatoes.

Buffalo Chicken-Fried Pork Chops

Six thin-sliced pork chops

1 egg, beaten

Flour (enough to cover a paper plate)

Bread crumbs (in similar quantities to the flour)

Buffalo wing sauce

Milk (half a cup, maybe)

Half of one of those plastic containers of pre-crumbled blue cheese

One large pat of butter

Oil

Marinate the pork in the Buffalo wing sauce for at least a couple hours.

Remove the pork from the marinade and pat dry with paper towels. Coat each chop first in the flour, shaking off any excess, then in egg, then in bread crumbs.

Before you go any further, make the sauce.

Heat the milk and butter over medium heat. When the milk nears a simmer, begin melting in the blue cheese, one handful at a time, whisking between handfuls. If it’s not thickening quite enough, whisk in a spoonful of flour.

When it looks about right, put it on very low heat, whisking occasionally.

Heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Cook the chops, in batches, until brown on both sides. Serve with the sauce drizzled over them.

02/04/2013

For those of you who know what scrapple is and reacted with "Really?!? Where?" it's in the meat cooler at Price Chopper, toward the end where the keep the salt pork, bacon ends and smoked ham hocks.

For those of you wondering what the heck scrapple is, it's a sausage-like concoction of Dutch descent that is a standard part of the diner breakfast in the mid-Atlantic region. You can usually find it as far north as Philadelphia and Delaware, but it quickly becomes unknown as you get further into Union territory. I've seen it in Virginia, but I don't know how much it penetrated into the Confederacy.

Scrapple comes in a big block whose exact contents you are better off not knowing. To cook it, slice off a piece as thin as you can get without mashing it and then fry it in a little oil or butter. You want to brown it until the outside is good and crusty. It is common to serve it with hot sauce, but I don't think this is required.

For those of you wondering if this is some weird thing I'm trying to pass off on my unsuspecting victims readers, you should know that after trying a bite, my extremely finicky four-year-old daughter demanded that I make more. If it's good enough for her, you can probably handle it.

01/23/2013

No, this is the sort of lunch I throw together when I have just the right confluence of leftovers.

It is also, I would argue, a case for obsessively collecting funky ingredients, because you can then make dishes like this and honestly tell people it was "just stuff I had lying around."

My basic recipe for pickled tongue can be found here. This time, I ditched the pepper, cilantro and cumin seeds, substituting thyme, a couple bay leaves and a dozen black peppercorns. Use whatever spices you want, though. I also had five regular-size pork tongues, and had to double the amount of brine.

And fair warning to all of you -- now that I'm getting a more or less regular supply from a couple folks at the winter farmers market, you can expect to see more recipes involving pickled tongue. Sooner or later, a few of you are going to break down and try it. Then you will love it. Then you will start buying up all the tongue you find, too. Then I won't be able to get it as easily because I'll be competing for it with you-all...

Maybe I should rethink this whole thing about championing odd ingredients.

Pickled tongue-Gorgonzola hash

1 pickled pig tongue (see above) diced small

1 small onion, diced small

1 small red potato

3 slices from a hunk of good, stinky Gorgonzola, each a bit bigget than a pat of butter.

butter

salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter over medium-high heat and sweat the onions, seasoning with salt and pepper.

When the onions are soft, grate in the potato and mix. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to color. Stir in the tongue and continue to cook until the mixture begins to brown.

Melt in the Gorgonzola, stir together and serve.

I washed this down with a glass of Brown's Farmstand cider, but a hearty red wine would work, too.

01/07/2013

Normally, I prefer to use chunks of stew meat, shredding them as they cook, rather than ground up meat.

Normally, I don’t bother with pig’s feet in chili, trusting whatever meat I use to enrich the liquid, and whatever liquid I used to have enough other flavors.

Normally, I think using spicy sausage to provide the heat is cheating.

Normally, I would not cook with a beer I wouldn’t drink. Okay, so there’s no such thing as a beer I wouldn’t drink, but there are plenty I wouldn’t pay for, and that’s what went into this pot.

The thing about chili, though, is that it is one of the great ways of disposing of whatever you have on-hand, and this one was devised largely to get rid of some andouille that was just a bit too hot for me.

So, I figured I’d water it down, so to speak, with some ground beef that was cluttering up the freezer. The only beer in the house was my dad’s Genny Cream, so I figured a pig’s foot would compensate for the lack of flavor.

So, yes, my first chili of the year was not chili as I prefer to make it, but it was chili, so it was good.

Beef-Andouille Chili

2 pounds ground beef

12 ounces andouille sausage (three links of whatever brand they have at Hannaford)

3 cans Genesee Cream Ale

1 pig’s foot

3 medium-small onions, diced small

1 red bell pepper, dice small

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

cumin

oregano

3 cans of tomatoes

2 cans black beans

2 cans red kidney beans

half a bag of frozen sweet corn

salt and pepper to taste

Brown the beef in a large pot, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Quarter the sausages lengthwise and slice, adding to the pot along with the onions and bell pepper. Cook until the onions become translucent and add the garlic, cumin oregano and bay leaf. Cook, stirring, for about a minute and add the tomatoes, beans and corn along with enough beer to cover.

Throw in the pig’s foot, bring to a boil, reduce to a low simmer and cook, covered, for at least two hours. Three or four would be even better.

Discard the pig’s foot and bay leaf and raise the heat. cook, stirring occasionally, until it reaches your desired thickness. I like chili with a sludge-like consistency, so take it off the heat sooner if you prefer yours soupy.

07/11/2012

There is, if we are honest with ourselves, no good reason to make small bowls out of bacon to hold our salads. We should not necessarily allow that to stop us.

Some might argue that having five to seven strips of bacon along with your salad defeats the purpose of having a salad. They would probably be right. Ask yourself this, though, what would you rather have: something sensible or a salad bowl made of bacon?

07/02/2012

I'm a bad blogger. The first week I was off, and I won't bore you with my excuses for last week.

Anyway, I'm back, and since summer has descended on us with a vengeance and it's Fourth of July week, I think it's time for a post on the great American cuisine: barbecue.

The first thing you need to know is that barbecue is NOT a synonym for "grilled." Nor does it mean "grilled food covered in barbecue sauce." Barbecue is a slow-cooking method using a covered grill and a low smokey fire. Much like with braising, barbecuing turns tough cuts of meat into tender, flavorful mouthfuls.

You do not need one of those huge oil-drum set-ups to make barbecue. A decent backyard grill will suffice, though you want a relatively deep one with easily adjustable vents. Nor do you need fancy wood chips. Charcoal will get the job done. The wood chips are nice, though. You could also take some green sprigs of growth from a tree in your backyard, like my mother does with an apple tree. Got some firewood leftover from the winter? Smaller, shorter logs are good for barbecuing.

One of the easiest and most rewarding cuts of meat to barbecue is the pork shoulder, also called the picnic shoulder and Boston butt. In some parts of the country, barbecue means "pork shoulder." They run from four to 10 pounds. You want one with the bone in and skin on.

You will want a rub. A mixture of kosher salt, freshly cracked black pepper, paprika, dry mustard, minced garlic (or garlic powder) and minced onion (or onion powder) will give you a starting place from which to tinker. Mix it and rub it all over the surface of the meat.

A barbecue pork shoulder is an all-day effort. You'll need to allow six to eight hours for it. Start a fire over on one side of your grill and set the meat on the other side. Then cover the grill and close the top and bottom vents so that they are only one-quarter open. Every 45 minutes or so, throw in another handful of charcoal.

The meat is done when you can plunge a large fork straight down into the center and pull it out with no resistance. Take it off the grill, shred it, mix it with whatever sauce you are using and either serve it as-is or in the fluffiest, cheapest white sandwich rolls you can find. Make sure you try the skin.

The leftovers from this keep for a week (more if you freeze them) and are highly versatile.